In the Eye of ‘Tailhook’

Gail O’Grady used to wear baggy clothes so people would take her seriously as an actress.

“I used to have a manager who used to say you got to wear tight clothes if you want the job,” she recalls. “I don’t want those kinds of parts.”

So she stuck to her beliefs and now feels “like I am getting what I want, which is to play intelligent women. I feel like I’m on a roll playing strong women.”

It’s lunchtime on the set of ABC’s “NYPD Blue,” in which the 32-year-old O’Grady plays the savvy, anything-but-dumb-blonde administrative assistant Donna Abandando. Last year, she received an Emmy nomination for her performance in the drama series.

In person, it’s hard to believe O’Grady and Abandando are one and the same. Gone is Abandando’s New York, working-class accent. O’Grady’s blond hair is pulled back into a bun; she’s wearing a simple, mini-sundress.

Turning off the soap “All My Children,” which she’s been a fan of since fourth grade, O’Grady is ready to discuss her latest strong female role--Lt. Paula Coughlin in “She Stood Alone: The Tailhook Scandal,” airing Monday night on ABC.

Written by Suzanne Couture, “She Stood Alone” is based on interviews, court documents, official reports and other published accounts of the 1991 Tailhook aviators convention in a Las Vegas hotel, where the former naval lieutenant was groped and harassed as she was passed along a hallway gantlet.

“The thing that was so disturbing about Tailhook,” O’Grady says, “is that these people weren’t her boss, which it is a lot of times [in assault or harassment cases]. These were her peers and literally her family. One of the things I found from doing the film is that [the Navy is] such an isolated community. These people really do depend on each other. That’s the thing that was most disturbing to Paula--it was such a violation of her family.”

At the annual pilots convention, Coughlin, then a helicopter pilot and admiral’s aide, was on the third floor of the Las Vegas Hilton when she came upon “the gantlet”--a line of partying men who chanted “Admiral’s aide! Admiral’s aide” as they thrust their hands into her bra and grabbed at her crotch.

The movie depicts Coughlin’s frustration at the lack of response by her boss, Rear Admiral Jack Snyder (played by Rip Torn) to her report of the sexual assault; this prompted her to go public. Though no officer was ever disciplined or court-martialed, a 23-month Pentagon investigation concluded that Coughlin was just one of 83 women who had been assaulted or harassed at the convention. Last year, in her civil suit against the Las Vegas Hilton, the now-retired Coughlin was awarded $6.7 million. (A U.S. District judge later reduced the judgment to $5.2 million.) The jury found the hotel and its parent company was guilty of “oppression or malice” for its role in the sex-abuse scandal. The decision is being appealed.

O’Grady says shooting the gantlet sequence was very disturbing. “I finished half a day and I was emotionally and physically exhausted. I went home, took my clothes off and took a shower. I was glad to get out of there that day because I didn’t think I could go through it again. Then I woke up the next morning and I said, ‘Oh my God, I have to go back in there again.’ It was just disgusting.”

The actors who formed the gantlet were given sensitivity training before the scene. “A lot of times when you get in groups of people, when you are shooting, something takes over,” O’Grady says. “People do get carried away. They wanted to make sure that everyone was in tune that we were shooting something that was pretend. A couple of times the director [Larry Shaw] had to get a bullhorn to make it stop because of the noise and everything.”

O’Grady never met with Coughlin. “Originally, we and everybody else tried to secure her rights in ’92 after she went public,” says executive producer Martha Humphreys. “As long as people are in uniform they can’t sell their rights to anybody.” Her attorney believed that once the lawsuit was filed against the Hilton, any implication that she was cooperating with a film company and getting compensation for it might diminish her case.

“Basically, we had her word she wouldn’t do it with anybody else,” Humphreys adds.

Humphreys wanted to do this project because she knows the Navy culture. “My husband of 30 years in June is a retired Naval aviator. Not too many people in our business really know squat about the military. Because it’s a delicate subject, if one jumps too strongly to one side or the other and it’s not accurate, the whole project will be looked on as not true. We did everything humanly possible to make sure this was as true as possible.”

“I didn’t want this to be a slap against the Navy,” O’Grady adds. “It was about a handful of people. Most of the Navy people I talked to were appalled by this.”

Though attitudes toward women in the Navy have changed since Tailhook, O’Grady discovered in talking to both female and male Navy officers that Coughlin is not popular. “It’s something that’s still taboo,” she says. “She was a whistle-blower. They make changes, but they are never popular.”

It was ABC’s decision, Humphreys says, to cast O’Grady as Coughlin. “I think it was a good one,” she says. “I guess the danger in casting someone who is a known TV entity ... is that people will tune in with certain expectations. The person will become bigger than the role. It was very important in this case for Paula to be Everywoman. Gail brought to the role a certain sensitivity and a certain emotional accessibility that a more movie-of-the-week maven wouldn’t have had.”

“She Stood Alone: The Tailhook Scandal” airs Monday at 9 p.m. on ABC; the season finale of “NYPD Blue” airs Tuesday at 10 p.m. on ABC.